[RndTbl] Command line challenge: trim garbage from start and end of a file.

I have files with the following structure: garbage garbage garbage output start .. good data .. good data .. good data .. good data output end garbage garbage garbage How can I extract the good data from the file trimming the garbage from the beginning and end? The following works just fine but it's dirty because I don't like the fact that I have to pick an arbitrarily large number for the "before" and "after" values. grep -A 999999 "output start" <infile> | grep -B 999999 "output end" > newfile Can anyone come up with something more elegant? -- John Lange www.johnlange.ca